Author: Keiran

Pop my skull, ready to lose control

I was planning on finishing the post I was writing about Canada today. Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I am having one of those “blurry” days, where I can’t stay mentally focused on anything. My work is suffering, since I can’t finish the tasks, I keep wandering off elsewhere. Ugh. Even writing this entry will likely take a few hours, and I don’t even need as much focus for ramblings that I’d need for recounting events of a trip. I’m starting to be tempted to break up that post into segments, and just post what’s already finished and then post more parts as I finish them.

And now, thanks to a new medicine I’m supposed to be trying out, I feel incredibly sick. I have a hunch that will be the first and last time I take that pill. Thankfully the doctor gave me samples to try out, and I hadn’t paid for a whole month’s worth of the medication! It didn’t help any that when I went to the restroom, someone decided to douse herself in an entire bottle of perfume. I had to walk out through that stench, and some of it clung to me and is making my nausea worse. I have a hunch that when I finally get to go home, I’ll be napping until it’s time for LOST.

Speaking of medicines, I have one thing to say. Wal-Mart may be a big evil? But oh my god I love that their $4 generic prescription program came to Texas. Instead of having to pay $75 for 3 prescriptions on my insurance plan, they only cost me $19.90. ($15 for one not covered on their plan, $2.80 for another, and $2.10 for the third.) My wallet has been a little thin lately, thanks in part to doctor co-pays, so being able to save over 70% on prescriptions is a god-send.

I finally got the diagnostic tools set up and run on my PC. Seven failing sectors. Right now, since it’s failing at a very slow rate, I’m going to try to make it last as long as I can. That will give me time to make sure all my data is completely backed up (that’s being worked on daily, in order from most important down to least important). It also gives me the ability to get the new hard drive with money I’ll receive from Christmas. That way, it’s a little easier on my pocketbook, especially since I definitely want to get a larger hard drive than I have now. Hah. Or, if I decide, it gives me the ability to get a new PC instead of just a new hard drive. I am researching to see what’s out there now that I might want.

Not only is my computer going absolutely nuts … so is my cell phone. Two weeks ago, the display was completely backwards and almost colorless; and it had the message “Check SIM” on the screen. Turning it off and on corrected the problem for a little while. Last week I discovered that some of my games were no longer working properly (which sucks when in a waiting room with nothing to do), and the phone wasn’t responding correctly to the buttons pressed. I headed down to the T-Mobile store over the weekend to ask about it. I figured I just needed a new SIM card, especially because of that message and since my card was 5+ years old. The clerk believed I needed a new phone, so we replaced both. She was able to give me the new SIM card right then, as well as transfer all my numbers over for me. YAY!

The new phone is being shipped to me and should be here any day. Considering I’m still having some of the same issues, I think she was right and it’s the phone. It’s sad really. This phone isn’t even a year old yet, and it’s already being replaced. I had my previous phone for over 4 years, and it was still working perfectly when I decided to upgrade. In fact, I kind of preferred that phone to the ones they have out now. But, the new phones have more features than my old one did — like decent games — so it was time to upgrade. At least I still have that phone and can switch back to it if this one craps out completely before the replacement arrives.

More traveling is on my horizon. This Friday, I’m headed to Los Angeles for the weekend. It’s been almost 6 months since I’ve got to play on the west coast, so I’m ready to get back out there again. I wish I could have a little extra company on this trip in the form of my best friend, like I did last year, but at least I got to go to visit her just a few weeks ago.

I think it’s also time for a blog redesign. I’m getting fed up of the current theme I have. It’s nice, I’m just tired of it.

Predictable errors and no identity

My computer is failing. Little by little it has been going bad; a long slow painful death. At first it was little things. Nothing too obvious that it was the hard drive. I started having problems viewing files. If a webpage has an embedded file, I can’t watch it. But if I go directly to the source, I can. That started in one browser, then another, then another; each collapsing over time. More recently, I lost the ability to use the center mouse button. It’s still set up in the system to work — it just refuses to. From time to time, my ability to right click will disappear. Normal tasks that used to operate at a reasonable speed has started slowing down and freezing up my PC. I had defragged, virus checked, removed ad/spyware, and nothing was helping. It’s been incredibly frustrating because I knew something was wrong, just didn’t know what.

The day I left for Canada (Oct 6), the cable internet went out after I left. At first, mom somehow expected me to be able to fix it from 1100+ miles away. My brother showed up, and he helped her call the cable company and deal with them to find out what was going on. (Later we discovered it was actually the electric company’s fault. They were having issues and sending intentional power surges down the line to diagnose their problem. Those surges kept messing up the modem since I had forgotten to put it back on it’s surge protector when I rehooked up the PC a in September. Oops. Thankfully the rest of the PC was shut down AND protected. Evil power company.) While mom was on the phone with the cable company, they dialed into my pc. The tech asked mom “You know there’s something wrong with your PC, right?” To which my mom told him I did know. He told her that we could call Sony and they would help us with it. If *I* had been home, I would have asked him WHAT was wrong with it, since I knew it was messed up, but had no idea HOW. But, at least him saying that verified to me that there was indeed something wrong, and I wasn’t just hallucinating things.

When I got back home, I was told to run a drive scan. I did and sure enough my main hard drive has bad sectors. I’m installing Seagate’s desktop drive scan (but this process is taking multiple days because of the hard drive issues) to do a better scan and see what’s wrong with it. It’s starting to get a little worse, freezing up more. So, while I’m still running pretty well, I’m also burning CDs of important things so I don’t lose them. I’ve also uploaded a bunch of stuff onto my websites for storage purposes. I am trying to sign up for the free trial of the Spare Backup service, so that I can protect as much of my data as possible. Unfortunately, I’m having problems with that as well. Grrr.

And if I meet you, what if I eat you, I am the tiger

Tigers are… Hugely generous, well mannered, courageous, honourale, noble, magnetic, lucky, strong, authorititive, sensitive, deep thinking, dedicated, passionate

Tiger make good leaders and warriors.

Tigers can also be… Aggressive, undisciplined, uncompromising, vain, disobedient, hot headed, stubborn, disrespectful of rules

Most compatable with: Horse, Dog, Dragon

Least compatable with: Monkey, Ox

Famous Tigers: Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Jodie Foster, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins, Ludwig van Beethoven, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde

Western co-signs: TIGER/Leo Fire and wood again. Shining brightly, the Tiger/Leo ought to be the happiest of beasts. The indisputable king of the jungle hasn’t a worry in the world. For once his arch-rival is on his side. Nothing short of an excess of pride and preening vanity should daunt him. His ego might just get in the way of his brain from time to time. If you deal with this creature, keep your sense of humour. His roar is worse than his bite.

The Chinese Elements and your sign: The Wood Tiger
This Tiger is well noted for his (or her) boundless enthusiasm and exceptional daring. An unflinching pioneer, he loves to undertake grandiose projects and do what has never been done before. But he prefers initiating to realizing, and few of his enterprises are carried through to a happy conclusion. Failure, however, never influences his calenture in a way or another. Whatever the situation in which he may find himself, the Tiger of this combination can always discover something that fascinates him. Boredom is consequently unknown to his nature. He lives intensely, crowding every minute of his life and never allowing himself to muddle through or indulge in self-pity for a single moment. He holds, contempt for both ivory-tower idealists and garrulous theoreticians alike, being himself unable to pursue any thought or conversation in depth. He is prone to sudden, unpredictable explosions of boiling anger, and this weakness of his is a serious handicap in his relations with others. Despite his fiery character, he does need a congenial affective atmosphere in order to function properly. The Wood Tiger is often a prey to his various internal conflicts. He is often torn between his selfishness and his generosity. He acutely feels the necessity of more patience and consistency, yet he cannot help being drawn away from one job to another. There is also a contradiction between his obvious desire for adventures and his secret longing for a cozy life. It is important that he can solve these conflicts during his adolescence, preferably with psychiatric help.